Shetland Islands, Scotland

 August 5 - Shetland Islands, Scotland

Today we are off on a wildlife cruise around Noss National Nature Reserve and Bressay and are joined by an English couple from the UK, Pam & Harvey.   Hopefully ‘the photographer’ will have opportunities to capture the natural beauty and fauna of this area - and maybe I will get lucky with a few good shots too! Our skipper and guide are a husband and wife team who operate ‘Seabirds and Seals’.

Lerwick is a pretty harbour town, and a very busy commercial port. We are anchored out in the bay and use tender boats (water shuttles) to go back and forth.  In the photo below you can see our three modes of transportation today… in the foreground, the catamaran for our tour…. in the background, our ship anchored in the bay… and on the left just off the pier you can see one of the tender boats coming into view.

The first thing of interest after we left the harbour was an interesting rock formation called the Giant’s Leg. 

 

Moving along the coast we begin to see dozens of seabirds.  Brian took us into Orkney-man’s  Cave where we saw Black Guillemots perched on the ledges in the cave.

The scenery around Bressay Island was beautiful and reminded us of a similar excursion we took in Tasmania with the rocky cliffs.  The birds we saw here were gannets, guillemots, puffins, kittiwakes, skuas, shags and cormorants. This will be like ‘Where’s Waldo?’ as you look at the photos! You can tap the photos to enlarge them!

Our next viewing was a colony of gannets….. like an apartment building on a cliff!

There were many shags and cormorants as well.  Shags are the ones with the long necks.

Marie and Brian gave us a great opportunity to see the gannets diving for fish! as Brian tossed the fish overboard, the birds swooped in and dove for them, swallowing the whole fish! It was a frenzy, but only the quick ones were rewarded!

We were lucky to see some puffins as many of them have left for the Faroe Islands.  Can you spot them?

We stopped in a protected cove for some refreshments - tea and coffee with biscuits!  Scotch shortbread!  Yum!  For you tea lovers - look at the cute tea cosy!

Erin - I thought of you when I saw the milk container from Tesco!

And of course our day would not have been complete without a lighthouse or two, right,  Cathy!

It was a great excursion  - a real change from driving the countryside in a bus. Our luck held out with the weather as the forecast had predicted rain from about the time our tour was to start!  Instead, it just began to sprinkle as we got off the boat to head for the tender back to our ship!

Off to the Orkney Islands tonight! We will be crossing our fingers for a decent day tomorrow!

Love from the Wildlife Watchers!